Hojicha
The Japanese steamed green route, taken as far as refining, and then a final firing pushed so far past its usual point that it stops producing a green tea at all.
What makes this route what it is
The same slot as a sencha's finishing fire, filled by the same kind of machine, run far enough that the product changes category. It is the only route in the catalogue whose distinguishing feature is a setting rather than an operation, and it is the best available demonstration that the six categories describe conventions as well as chemistry.
The route, in order
Each note describes what the step is doing in this route. The same operation does a different job in a different chain.
Ordinary Japanese fixation. The tea being made here is a sencha or a bancha and nothing yet anticipates the roast.
Ordinary rolling. Stem-heavy and coarser material is common because it is what the fine-tea trade sets aside, not because the route requires it.
- 3.
Drying
The aracha is finished. A complete, saleable tea exists at this point.
Cutting, screening and de-stemming. Which fraction goes to the roaster is a commercial decision, and stem fractions make a hojicha with a noticeably sweeter, lighter character.
The finishing fire, run far past the setting at which it would produce a sencha. Same slot, same class of machine, and a different category comes out.
Immediate forced cooling. Leaf leaving a roaster carries enough stored heat to continue roasting itself, and this step is what fixes where the roast actually stopped.
How it differs from its neighbours
A route described on its own teaches very little. The useful fact is always which other route it is nearly identical to, and where it leaves it.
The two routes are the same tea up to a point. Everything before the divergence is shared; everything after it is not.
Four identical steps. At step five the sencha route applies a finishing fire and this one applies the same operation much harder, and the tea stops being a green tea in the ordinary sense. The routes are the same manufacture until the setting on one machine.
One position in the route is filled by a different named method. The shape of the route is unchanged.
Read the other way round, hojicha roasting is the sencha finishing fire and nothing else. Which is why a very heavily fired sencha genuinely sits between the two products, and why nobody can say precisely where the line is.
Where it goes wrong
Roasting is fast and irreversible and the leaf carries enough heat to keep going after it leaves the drum, so a batch that looked correct in the machine can be bitter and ashy by the time it is cool. Cooling immediately is not a finishing touch; it is the step that decides where the roast stopped.
In full
Hojicha is a finished tea put back through a machine. Sencha, bancha or kukicha — most often the later, coarser or stemmier fractions — is roasted in a rotating drum or over a fired cylinder at a temperature far above any finishing fire, until the leaf turns from green to reddish brown and the vegetal character is replaced by caramel, toast and wood. It is then cooled immediately, because leaf that comes off the roaster hot keeps roasting itself and the margin between finished and burnt is small. What makes the route worth recording separately is that it demonstrates a continuum rather than a boundary: a lightly fired sencha, a heavily fired one and a hojicha are the same operation at three settings, and there is no point along that range at which a different thing begins. The category boundary is a matter of convention and the process is a dial.